The Usual
by TheFoxinator
Summary: For the most part, vampires stick to the usual rules when it comes to how to slay them. Different slayage scenes from pre-series through season ten.


**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the world in which they live.**

 **A/N: Written as a Comment Fic fill for Classics_Lover who prompted: "** **Any vampire fandom, any, five times vampires adhered to the vampire mythology and one time they didn't."**

* * *

Xander: So, what else?

Buffy: What else what?

Xander: For vampire slayage.

Buffy: Oh, fire, beheading, sunlight, holy water, the usual.

- _Buffy the Vampire Slayer,_ "The Harvest"

* * *

The nest is dark and underground and drippy and very incompatible with her new boots. It's also torchlit. In the flickering light, Buffy can see six vampires sprawled out on mouldy couches and old mattresses. Two more than they'd thought, but still few enough that she can probably take them all without letting any get to the sewer exit she'd stationed Xander beside.

Buffy shifts her stake to her left hand, closes her fist around the nearest torch, and yanks it free. She's too short to lift it out and she tears the sconce from the wall too. The metal clatters to the tunnel floor and six pairs of yellow eyes and sharp fangs turn to her in an instant.

"You really should think about getting a generator," she tells them.

But, well, it was really nice of them to make her job so easy.

xxxxxxx

His name is Lucas Hull. Five days ago Buffy had cheered him and the rest of the Hemery High football team into a landslide victory and now he's repaying her by pinning her to the ground and trying to sink his teeth into her neck.

Somewhere between him being three times her size and him being the first vampire she actually, like, _knew_ , she gets thrown totally off her Slayer game the last two months of training and her basic instincts just dissolve.

If Merrick could flip, and she's not so sure he can, he'd flip over this.

Probably.

Buffy strains under Hull's giant hands, testing her new superpowers to their limits. She forces his arms apart. It's just a little space but it's enough for her to raise her legs and kick.

She knocks him off of her and scrambles to her feet.

Her stake is gone, lost several minutes ago and barely into the fight, and she looks around desperately. Weapons, weapons, weapons.

Why couldn't he have waited nine more hours to rise from his grave?

(Do vampires ever do that? Are any of them that dumb? That'd make her life oh so much easier.)

Hull lunges and Buffy ducks. She rolls out of the way and her hand closes around her backpack, lying against the side of the tree where she'd been waiting for him to rise. She tears the zipper open as he charges and fumbles through the contents.

Hull lands on top of her just as her fingers close around the X-acto knife she'd stolen from the art room yesterday.

If she gets out of this, she's never going to school without a backup stake in her bag ever ever again.

Also, forget mechanical. She's going to start using regular pencils again.

xxxxxxx

It bothers Angel that they don't get to go out on cute lunch dates and get mochas at the Espresso Pump and to actually triple up with Will and Oz and Xander and Cordy when they have picnics, instead of her being Fifth Wheel Buffy.

But it can be nice sometimes. When she curls up in bed beside him in the mid-afternoon, in the space between when she needs to be Dutiful Daughter Buffy, and Schoolgirl Buffy, and when the sun sets and she needs to be the Slayer.

Sometimes she can slip into the mansion and just be, with him, and hidden away from the sunlight.

xxxxxxx

Buffy sees the use in holy water. She really does. A little splashing, a little smoking and screaming, and poof—dust. This is why, four months into her Slayerness, she fills the pockets of her letter jacket with the small glass bottles before she heads out to the cemetery.

She runs into a vampire on her way through the gates.

Well, it's the other way around but still.

The bottles break, the water splashes, and the vamp burns and freaks out long enough for Buffy to pull out her stake and put him out of his misery.

Afterwards, she lies on the floor in her bra while Pike picks shards of glass out of her torso because she's too embarrassed to tell Merrick what happened.

She stops using holy water as a casual patrol-y weapon, but she's definitely been grateful for it later on.

xxxxxxx

The vampire of the evening would still be six feet tall without her high heels. Buffy'd felt her eyes a block back and leads her away from the street, slipping into the first alleyway she finds.

The vampire comes at her swinging, her rings glinting under the dim light from the streetlamp, and Buffy barely catches her fist. The rings dig into her palm, sharp and cool.

She brings up her scythe, even though her grip is wrong to be wielding one-handed, and swings to stab her opponent with the stake at the end. She can't reach the vampire's heart but getting her in the face will definitely throw her off.

The vampire twirls away, wrenches her hand free, and before Buffy can correct her grip, she knocks the scythe away.

Buffy spins to kick but the vampire lunges and tackles her. Hands on her shoulders, knee to her gut. She is pinned to the filthy alley ground.

The vampire shifts faces and leans in.

Buffy waits.

The vampire presses her nose right into Buffy's throat, just for a moment, and violently flinches with a hiss and a trail of smoke from the burn on her chin.

It's not much but it's exactly what she'd hoped for and what she expected and Buffy takes that moment, that instant of recoil, to throw the vampire off of her.

The vamp sails over her head and collides with the outer wall of one of the buildings. Before she can even pick herself back up, Buffy is there, slamming the end of her scythe through her heart.

The vamp dissolves into dust and Buffy adjusts her choker.

Crosses. Can't beat the basics. No good Slayer should leave home without hers.

xxxxxxx

In the time it takes for her to round up the rest of the Scoobies for movie night and let them know the food is here, Spike's consumed most of the garlic shrimp.

Aren't people from the nineteenth century supposed to have good table manners and not, you know, paint their nails over breakfast and text under the table and finish off one of the dishes before everyone else gets there?

"Spike."

"What?" He licks his fingers. "I left some."

He left five shrimp. One for each of them.

Well. That's slightly more considerate than he was when he was evil, she'll give him that.

She'll probably also probably gonna write in some more popular lore into the rule book, though. Make sure any future Slayers who fall in love with any future (or, current, anyway) vampires don't have to deal with this problem.

Stupid rules.


End file.
